Monday, October 31, 2016

By Matthew Lewis

Published in 1796

A Classic Flashback

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In the middle of The Monk: A Romance is hidden this interesting comment...

"An
author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom
everybody is privileged to attack; For though all are not able to write
books, all conceive themselves able to judge them."

Ouch!

Matthew
Lewis, even at the age of 19 when he wrote this classic Gothic romance
in 1796, was able to accurately predict the reaction to his first novel.
It was both praised and reviled by the critics. It was certainly
controversial for its viewpoint of the church and only a little less so
for passages that were considered erotic at the time. In most cases,
they would only elicit a bit of amusement in today's' jaundiced eyes.

Yet The Monk
does have its moments. The primary plot involves a monk who is seduced
by a woman who entered his monastery disguised as a boy. He sinks into
debauchery that include rape, torture and murder. These passages evoke
the same kind of dread and horror that the reader would feel today.
Lewis is best when writing about the more evil characters. The monk
Ambrosia and his she-devil in crime Mathilda are fully developed
villains.

But he is less interested in more mentally healthy
protagonists. There is a romantic sub-plot involving the sweet and
innocent Agnes, but his heroes and heroines tend to be...well...dull. I
couldn't help thinking his heroes needed a few lap dances to get the
sanctimonious ice out of their veins and his heroines could learn a
little by watching a couple episodes of Desperate Housewives.

But
overall, this was a fun read even if the dialogue tends to be
overwrought to the point of silliness...which just goes to show that
Gothic romances haven't changed much in the last 200 years.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Eat the Night

By Tim Waggoner

Publisher: Darkfuse

Pub. Date: September 26, 2016

Rating: 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars

I have read two novels by Tim Waggoner and the thing that stuck with me
on both is the sense that they are excellent introductions to
fascinating alternative realities that would be fun to explore.

In Eat the Night,
we are introduced to two separate persons. Joan Lantz is a woman who
buys a house and finds an basement hidden behind the wallpaper. She is
having dreams of a past ritual and hearing death metal songs that seem
to be related to her presence in the house. Kevin Benecke is an employee
of a mysterious organization simply called Maintenance. It seems to be
the obstacle that blocks evil entities from invading our world from
other dimensions. The stories of Joan and Kevin are told separately for a
brief period then merge together as Maintenance follows a source of
evil to Joan's house. Add on the malevolent spirit of a Jim Jones
influenced rock singer and you have all the basics.

The novel is slightly over 100 pages and that is part of the problem. The other book I read (The Last Mile
to which I awarded 5 stars) was brief too but it involved one story
line that carefully fed us background until it all came together). Eat the Night
feels a bit fragmented and I never got the idea that I knew what this
world was really about. In telling the story in a shortened length,
neither Kevin or Joan really came alive for me. Yet despite that it does
manage to work and I got enough of the world and its alternate universe
to bring it all together. It's an exciting story nonetheless. I just
kept wanting more. When you think about it that is about as positive a
criticism as they come.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

By C.V. Hunt

Publisher: Atlatl Press

Pub date: November 15, 2016

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I ended up identifying with the protagonist of We Did Everything Wrong
more than was comfortable. He is 65. I am 65. He is a widower and I am a
widower,. He is a widower by only 9 months compared to my 3 years but I
certainly understood his ennui as he grieves. He has a weird friend
that nobody likes and so do I. He hates Walmart and...

But that
is where the similarities stop. Abraham Koyfman is bitter and depressed
and, while the death of his wife has much to do with it, that is not
really the reason. He is unhappy where his life has taken him,
disappointed with the results, and sees no hope. He is still in mourning
but it is unlikely anything will pull him out of it for a long time if
ever. All he has is a fruitless job selling subliminal self-help tapes
which barely augments his income. He is on the verge of suicide when his
rude and drunk friend Horace and his annoying girl friend drops in for a
surprise visit. Horace convinces him to go to a meeting of the
self-help tape company salesmen and tell his employer face-to-face he is
through. What follows is the world most existentially depressing road
trip.

C.V. Hunt never goes for the sunlight and this is no
different. But she still manages to find meaning in the dark. While Hunt
is mostly known for Bizarro, horror and psychological horror,there
is none of that here. The closest it comes to horror is a existential
horror reminiscent of Sartre and Becket without the absurdism. The
author describes the novel as "A coming-of-age story for the middle
age". That may have scared me the most to consider 65 as middle age in
this era of elongated lifetimes. Abraham is discovering that his
"mid-life crisis" still has 30 years to go when he originally thought he
would be on the downside and experiencing it with his lifetime partner.
Can it get more devastatingly real than that? Perhaps it will be too
real for most people. No escapism, no violence but plenty of pondering
the meaning of life. For some people, that can be the most nihilistic
thing they can do and that is what Abraham may be learning from his
plight and from his friend.

We Did Everything Wrong is a
bit of step forward for the author. Like another author she is very
familiar with, Hunt is wandering away from horror and Bizarro and
tackling big life problems in a way that confronts and maybe terrifies.
This is an easily read book due to the author's substantial skills in
storytelling but it may not be an easy book to digest. And that is what
makes it worthwhile, maybe even important, to read.

Friday, October 21, 2016

By Mariko Koike

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Pub. Date: October 11, 2016

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The first thing that should be noted about The Graveyard Apartment
is that it was first published in Japan in 1988. Almost 30 years later
we have the first English translation of this quietly powerful horror
novel by Mariko Koike. It is hard to figure out why it took so long.
This was evidently a big success in Japan and the issues in it relate
well to the western environment. It is also interesting to note that the
plot and behaviors, with the exception of no cell phones which would
have altered the story significantly, does not seem dated at all and
reads like it could happen today.

The basic plot involves a
family (Teppei, Misao, their daughter Tamoa and Cookie the dog) who
moves to a suspiciously inexpensive apartment complex in Tokyo. Western
fans of both horror movies and books know instinctively that you get
what you pay for and I suspect that is an universal concept. The fact
that the apartment complex is situated a little out of the mainstream
and next to a cemetery and crematorium should be a big hint for them to
reconsider but the family moves in happily. This is Teppei’s second
marriage with the first ending in a way that sets an aura of guilt
around the couple. At first the move seems to be a blessing with the
only odd thing being the daughter’s announcement that her deceased pet
finch is visiting her and warning about bad things to come. Eventually
other odd occurrences happen which escalates in severity. Pretty soon,
the other tenants are leaving in fear but whatever is causing the events
doesn’t want them to leave.

This is a slow moving novel which
places the social and psychological dilemma of the family in good
perspective. When the karma hits the fan, so to speak, we understand the
motives of all involved, including Teppei’s brother and wife who seem
like minor characters at first but ends up with important roles at the
end. Tamao is a precocious child who, despite her childhood belief in
fantasy, seems to have a more grounded idea of what is going on than the
adults. The book works due to its build-up. It isn’t until about two
thirds through when thing start to really escalate and we have all the
pieces of the puzzle set firmly enough to share the dread and angst.

As
I mentioned earlier, it is quite amazing that the American publishers
didn’t catch on to this novel until thirty years later. Fortunately good
horror remains timeless. I am sure some might fault the lack of
resolution at the ending and that may indeed be why the publishers
failed to grab it at the time. It was our loss but now it has been
rectified. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a good
suspense story of the supernatural variety.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

By Jack Strange

Publisher: Kensington Gore Publishing

Pub. Date: May 4, 2016

Rating: 3 & 1/2 out of 5 stas

Robert Turner is given the thankless and impossible task of making the
reruns of an old outdated cooking show interesting again. Luckily he has
an uncle that has invented a machine that brings the dead back to life.
After trying it out on a cat that becomes mean and hungry enough to
chase pit bulls, he convinces his uncle to revive the 15 year old corpse
of the cooking show’s host Floyd Rampant with the idea of using the
resurrected chef to hype the show. The experiment is highly successful
but Floyd has bigger ambitions. He is set on making an army of celebrity
zombie chefs thus creating his own “Cookiphate” based on the devotion
of one main food ingredient. Human flesh.

That is how Jack Strange starts his debut novel Celebrity Chef Zombie Apocalypse,
to be called CCZA to maintain my sanity and preserve my typing fingers.
We’ve had zombie everything else so celebrity chefs seem to be a
logical extension. The author’s zombies are of the thinking type and
Floyd Rampant is an especially smart one. Hence we have a bizarre plot
being hatched by him that includes all the cannibalism and massacre one
would expect in a novel with such a title. The book starts out like
Bizarro black humor but soon morphs into an equally dark socio-political
satire. Yet the objective of a farce like this is never lost no matter
how many topical turns it takes. It makes you laugh even at the rather
comical but grotesque and gruesome stuff.

CCZA manages to make
fun of a lot of things: cooking shows, the media, politicians, the
military and, of course, zombies, although I doubt real zombies have the
ability to understand the humor. Strange has a lot of funny ideas going
from his head to the pages. I do wish he spent a little more time on
the characters though. With the exception of Floyd Rampant, the rest of
the cast weaves in and out without real focus. It create little
grounding in the novel which made me think I was reading a different
novel by the end due to the switch from horror farce to social satire.
At some point, the cleverness outweighed the structure. But that did not
keep me from laughing. CCZA is a very witty take on the over-populated
Zombie sub-genre of horror novels. There is always room for a zombie
novel that makes you laugh.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

By Greig Beck

Publisher: Cohesion Press

Pub. Date: September 29, 2016

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Adventure novels are sturdy creatures that find themselves lounging on
bookshelves, being read at the beach, and pretty much enjoying strong
sales at the book stores. They are generously docile until the reader
starts rifling their pages. At that point they have a tendency to hook
their claws into you and you are pretty much stuck with them until the
last exciting page.

Greig Beck is an Australian writer who knows
the adventure thriller quite intimately. He seems to revel in them. This
new creature of his, Fathomless, has all the markings of a thoroughbred. Borrowing from Michael Crichton, Clive Cussler and, in this particular book, the Jaws man himself Peter Benchley, Beck still manages to write a thoroughly entertaining book with his own style.

In
Fathomless, we start in the 50s when explorer Jim Granger find a new
route through a cave in the Arctic that leads to an undiscovered
underground body of water known to the residents as “Bad Water”. He
quickly meets his demise but decades later his granddaughter Kate
Granger comes across the same clues and, with the help of a Russian
billionaire, puts together an expedition to explore the underground sea.
What fuels the expedition is that the creature that killed her
grandfather may an animal that has been extinct for millions of years.
They are also about to find how it was a good thing it was thought to be
extinct.

The monster of the novel is a Carcharodon Megalodon, a
very large form of shark and the most dangerous predator to ever grace
our planet, at least according to the writer and excluding man. The
thrills in the book are continuous but seem to divide into two parts.
The first part is the discovery and exploration of the warm-water sea.
This reads much like a Crichton novel as we are introduced to undersea
exploration technology and eventually to several creatures that manages
to survive millions of years in the isolated waters. The author has a
good feeling for the techno-thriller and even a better touch for
describing the strange world our explorers find them in. There is of
course intrigue and sabotage which makes the adventure even tenser. In
the second half it turns into a hunt for the predator. The Jaws-like twist in the plot is exciting and gives a whole new urgency to the old adage, “We need a bigger boat”.

It’s
an exciting romp with aspects of thriller, science fiction, horror and
of course adventure, all forming an entertaining style of beach read or,
since summer is over, a fireside read. The protagonists of the novel
all do their job yet none of them really stand out as flesh and blood
characters outside the confine of the pages. There was only one sour
note for me. It entails a Greenpeace style ship and crew that interrupts
the hunt. It is pure stereotype and a little bit nasty considering the
escapism of the story. But it doesn’t dim the excitement all that much.

Overall,
Fathomless is an engaging novel and intelligent novel that promises
thrills and adventure and delivers. While Greig Beck is a new writer to
me, I can see that he is likely to have an enthusiastic group of readers
that follow him on his adventures and will be delighted to shudder at
the formidable creatures in this book

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Edited by John Palisano

Publisher: William Wu Books

Pub. Date: September 3, 2016

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I love rescued animals. One of the great joys in life is to give a
forgotten animal a home. Now I am not extreme on this. I have friends
who have purebred cats and dogs from reputable dealers and that is just
fine. All animals need love. But if you are the average Joe, shelter
animals and rescues are the way to go. But the real heroes are the
people who spend their time and effort helping the many forgotten and
abandoned animals in the world find such a loving home. If there is such
a thing as reincarnation, devoting your life to rescuing animals must
be the most direct way to bypass it and head straight to Nirvana

So here we have Scales and Tales,
a collection of 21 stories about animals. It is a benefit anthology
edited by John Palisano and published by William Wu. The proceeds will
go to benefit three worthy rescues operations in the Los Angeles area:
The Southwestern Herpetologists Society (Snakes need love too!), Star
Paws Rescues, and Kitt Crusaders. The collection itself is a mixture od
some old classics and new stories by writers who are mostly known for
fantasy, horror and science fiction. The writers range from the
legendary like Ray Bradbury and Clive Barker to rising stars like Amber
Benson and Marv Wolfman. Others include David Gerrold, Dennis Etchison,
Joe R Lansdale, Lisa Morton Larry Niven, William F. Nolan.. It's a big
list of 21 authors!

Most of the fiction by more established
writers seem to be retreads. Of the less known writers, it is hard to be
compared to the Masters, there appears to be a little unevenness yet
none of them miss their mark. Here are some of the tales that stood out
for me, old and new. Joe R. Lansdale's "Fire Dog" is one of my all-time
favorites and one of the oddest in the book since it about a man acting
like a dog. Most of the others go right to the purring, barking or
hissing source. I kept waiting for the animal connection in William F.
Nolan's "One Clever Dude"...and then it hit me. The Ray Bradbury story
is one that I never read before, not an easy feat to do, but it is the
sweetest tale of the bunch. Sunni K. Brock is one of the few authors
that gives cats and dogs a rest and goes for less considered but still
worthy companions with "Iguana Iguana". David Gerrold wrote a most
moving story about a girl, her dreams and a dog. It is so good that I
will forgive him for using a punchline that misses because it evokes a
well known movie. Marv Wolfman and Larry Niven gives us some nice
science fiction to add to the mix.

Overall all it is a nice
anthology. The use of older fiction offsets some of the surprises but it
is still nice to revisit them and doesn't detract too much from the
newer material. I would give this a 3 and a half star rating but i feel
obligated to raise it a star purely for its noble intentions. If you see
this book, pick it up for good reading and for the cause. But really,
what is most important is to consider that bundle of fur or scales that
depends on you. If you are thinking of getting a pet, remember the local
shelter or humane society, There is a critter there waiting to be loved
by you and yearning to be given the chance to love you back.

About Me

My name is Marvin P. Vernon and I am a retired social worker who specialized in family therapy and domestic violence prevention. In the past, I have been a contributor to the Fact on File Student Thesaurus and currently pass my time as an avid reader and reviewer. I also work as a volunteer librarian at the Sun City Palm Desert Library. You can also find my reviews on Goodreads You can contact me at mpvernon5149@yahoo.com